It's a chilling conclusion to the Welsh National Opera's season at the Wales Millennium Centre with a spooky double bill set in a gothic house of secrets. We send along two critics - with two different results

Welsh National Opera turns to horror to conclude its summer season staging a double bill based on the spooky story, The Fall of the House of Usher by master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe.

The two one-act pieces provide different takes on the same tale of Roderick who lives reclusively in the crumbling family pile and his twin sister Madeline who develops a mysterious illness and is buried alive. Both versions are told against the very clever use of film and projections evoking a chilling setting for this gothic house of secrets.

Doors open and close on their own and ghostly ancestors come out of the walls in a way that probably couldn't have been achieved with more traditional scenery.

Usher House, the world premiere of a new work by Gordon Getty, starts off deep in the woods before coming into the large house while La Chute de la Maison Usher by Debussy and finished after his death by Robert Orledge, has a starker more ramshackle backdrop but both create a sinister sense of foreboding.

Again, in both works the emphasis is on the story with each featuring three male characters. Although Madeline's presence is all pervading her actual singing role is miniscule but hauntingly beautiful.

In Usher House, Benjamin Bevan is a brooding obsessed Roderick. Anna Gorbachyova sings the small part of Madeline in both works but her character makes more of an appearance in the Getty version with Joanne Jeffries playing her as a dancer, an unhinged woman in white whirling around to her death.

In the second piece by Debussy there's even less in the way of action and the whole atmosphere is even more oppressively intense. The music played by the WNO orchestra under conductor Lawrence Foster seems darker and more dramatic as does Robert Hayward's tortured portrayal of Roderick. And Mark Le Brocq adds an eeriness of his own as the creepy doctor.

Both culminate in the house tumbling down a fitting end to send you nervously out into the night.

REVIEW 2 - by Mike Smith (2 stars)

David Pountney’s appointment was intended to usher in a new artistic era for WNO but this season has been a wave of production horrors and a critical hammering.

This latest deathly double bill won’t swing the pendulum back in the company’s favour, particularly as not even what rose from the pit could breathe life into this bloodless offering.

Pountney’s recorded message about opera houses needing money was the perfect introduction to the first of the two takes on Edgar Allen Poe’s most famous American Gothic novel; Usher House, by the mega rich Gordon Getty, who has donated to WNO. Enough said.

It is just about an hour long and a few minutes are quite pleasant. The story of the brother and sister, the last of a long line of family oddities, has Poe parachuted in as a visitor to save them – or is there more sinister work afoot?

Benjamin Bevan acts his socks off as a childlike, obsessed and tormented Roderick Usher, menaced by the mysterious Doctor Primus sung by Kevin Short. Jason Bridges sings and acts Eddie Poe with elegance but there is not a lot he can do with the plodding plot and over wordy libretto.

The gloom lifts after the interval with Robert Orledge’s reconstruction and orchestration of the fragments of Debussy’s work. Conducted by Lawrence Foster, the music flows effectively and captures the colour and atmosphere of Debussy’s finest equally dark, Pelléas et Mélisande.

As Roderick, Robert Hayward is marvellous. His long monologue is the dark heart of the work and gripping. The odd doctor is this time sung by Mark Le Brocq and Usher's friend is William Dazeley but there is little there for them or Anna Gorbachyova as Madeline to sink their teeth into.

Pountney's staging of both works does raise the spirits, with David Haneke video projections onto screens. In the Getty work it resembled an estate agent’s online tour of a house (here Penrhyn Castle) with ghostly images projected on to its walls and paintings coming to life.

In the Debussy it is far more effective zooming in on the stones of the building as they crumble with age emphasising Poe’s obvious metaphor.

This is the perfect reminder of the danger of building on swampy ground or landfill sites with dangerous gases that can go to the head – whatever the financial inducements.